Wal-Mart Launching Big Spring Sales Push

NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is hoping to shake off the winter sales doldrums with its biggest spring sales push ever.

The company is discounting more than 60 outdoor essentials from lawn mowers to mulch by 30 percent to 50 percent.

The sale starts Friday and will run through March 29.

Wal-Mart says the event was planned last summer as executives received forecasts that the winter was going to be especially harsh. But the company made changes since then because the winter was even more severe than expected.

The company is counting on an extra boost in sales from items like garden soil as shoppers prepare to restore their gardens and outdoor living spaces hurt by a series of winter storms.

Those storms chilled sales at Wal-Mart and other stores.

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